


Experiments

by RoseAngel



Series: The Red Thread [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, First Meetings, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6854050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseAngel/pseuds/RoseAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. - Ancient Chinese belief</p><p>A series of alternate ways that John and Sherlock could have met. PROMPT FIC.</p><p>Prompt #2: The postal worker delivered your package to my place accidentally and I was expecting something so I totally didn't look before I opened it and… wow that is um… quite an interesting thing you bought and I'm here to return it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experiments

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who commented on the last fic, and especially to everyone who sent in a prompt. They've all been noted and will absolutely be used. I'm still accepting prompts, so send them in!
> 
> A million thanks to my brilliant beta, Becca (LlamaWithAPen).
> 
> Today's prompt comes from Tumblr user anonymoussong's "List of AUs" post.

According to the postage website, the boxset of old _Doctor Who_ DVDs that John ordered is "in transit". John would like to think that this means that his parcel is due to turn up when the postman does his rounds this morning, but the postage website also said that his boxset was "in transit" yesterday, and the day before that. Not that John is checking frequently, of course.

Okay, so John _is_ checking the website repeatedly, but he's allowed to be a little bit excited. This is the first time in a long while that he's allowed himself to buy something that isn't strictly necessary, something just for him, just for enjoyment. Living off an army pension in a bedsit that barely deserves the title of 'flat', let alone 'home', John had only spent money on food and transport, saving up what he could. Now he's managed to get a job, however – just some work at a general practice, enough to help him earn enough money to move out into a nicer place on Montague Street. Nothing too fancy, but easily a step up from his bedsit. He's been here for a few weeks now, still working at the surgery, and he's been saving his money, only buying things that were necessary while he was settling in. However, he picked up a few more shifts in the past week, so he's earned a bit of extra money, and he figured that justified splurging a bit and buying something that he wanted.

So he's a little bit excited. He grew up watching this show and he has fond memories of it. Spending money, being excited about the purchase, and repeatedly checking the website for updates on the whereabouts of his delivery – it's all justified.

Besides, it's not like he's doing anything childish like staring out the window waiting for the postman to arrive. He's just sitting at his dining room table (he has a dining room, in this new place, an _actual_ dining room) with his laptop open, planning to go out and do his shopping at the _end_ of the day rather than at the start so that he doesn't wind up missing the postman.

And he's in luck, too. It's mid-morning when the doorbell rings. He doesn't have a huge number of friends and he has definitely not invited them over today, which means that the person behind the door is almost definitely the postman, with a box of Doctor Who DVDs.

Or they could possibly be a door-to-door salesperson, but John doesn't think he's quite _that_ unlucky.

He opens the door, and, just as he expected, the man standing behind it is wearing a postal jacket and has a parcel at his feet. In his hands he holds an electronic signature pad. "Good morning," he says, and John does his best not to look like he's been waiting impatiently for this delivery for a week.

He signs for the parcel and the man picks it up and hands it to him, saying "Have a nice day" as he moves back down to his bike on the street. John closes the door behind him, and then his face breaks out into a grin.

He carries the parcel onto his dining room table and puts it down, before grabbing a sharp knife from one of the drawers in his kitchen. In his head, he's going through his favourite episodes from his childhood, wondering which one he should watch first. Or maybe he should start at the very beginning, and relive his childhood through the show, watching it like he would have when it had first caught his interest.

He stabs the knife into the line of tape that seals the box shut, drags it along the length of the box to cut it open, throws open the flaps, and –

This.

This is not _Doctor Who_.

This is not even a DVD box set.

And this is most _definitely_ not something John would have been ordering.

Ever.

He stares blankly at the contents of the box for a long moment, as if he's expecting it to shift in front of his eyes and become the box of _Doctor Who_ DVDs that he had been expecting.

When it does not, he reaches in, very, very carefully, and touches one of the objects in the box with one finger, as though to confirm that it is not some sort of strange optical illusion, or trick of the mind.

The feel of cool metal against his fingertip confirms exactly what his eyes are telling him.

Sitting in front of him, is a box of handcuffs.

John isn't sure precisely how many handcuffs are in the box, because he doesn't want to start taking them out to count them, but there are definitely at least five sets in there. They're all the same colour – silver, realistic-looking, though surely they cannot actually be real, police-issue handcuffs? That said, you can get just about anything on the internet nowadays.

John isn't sure what someone would want with five or more pairs of handcuffs.

John isn't sure he _wants_ to know what someone would want with five or more pairs of handcuffs.

He walks away from the box for a moment, and then comes back. He closes the cardboard flaps so that he can see the name and the address on the box. Unsurprisingly, it's not his name. The name instead reads "Sherlock Holmes", and the address isn't the address for John's house, but the house next door.

He's just signed for his next door neighbour's delivery.

Whoops.

John hasn't met any of his neighbours yet. He's only moved in fairly recently, after all, and his neighbours clearly are not the sort of people to pop in and say hi or welcome him to the street. And John wouldn't expect them to, given he is also not the sort of person to pop to someone else's house and introduce himself. He would have expected that he would eventually meet his neighbours, when they left their houses at the same time and ran into each other on the street. Now, it seems that he might be forced to meet one of his neighbours much earlier than planned.

Maybe he can reseal the box, he thinks to himself. He could drop it off in front of this Sherlock Holmes' door and pretend that this whole thing never happened. But the man would have expected to sign for the box, and if he is suspicious enough to look into it, he'll discover John's signature. Maybe John should go over there himself. He can reseal the box, and he'll just go over there and explain the situation; he can say that he signed for the box without thinking, but when he got inside he noticed the name on the box. He can reseal it carefully; the man will never suspect a thing.

John realises a second later that that will not work, because he opened the box with a bit more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary, and so, rather than going straight through the tape, he managed to damage the sides of the flap as well. Even if he reseals it with masking tape, it's quite clearly been opened. If John goes and returns the delivery to its rightful owner, the rightful owner will still know that John has opened the box. And if John tries to deny having opened the box, the rightful owner might think that John has tried to steal from the box, or has done something else worth hiding.

There is only one option left. John just has to suck it up and tell the truth. He'll go over there, explain the situation, explain that he opened the box without realising that it wasn't for him. It was an accident; surely his neighbour will understand. Besides, it's not like the delivery was anything embarrassing or personal.

Unless the handcuffs are to be used for embarrassing, personal reasons.

John is very carefully not thinking about it. Definitely not. He doesn't want to know.

He closes up the box again, putting a piece of tape over the top to hold it shut. It definitely won't fool anyone into believing that the box has not been open, but it'll make it easier to carry. He lifts it carefully and carries it to his front door, taking a moment to shift it in his arms so that he has a free hand to open the door, and then he's stepping outside, walking across to the next door down, and then knocking.

He regrets it immediately. Maybe he should have just written a note. He could have left the box outside his neighbour's door with a note explaining the situation, and then everything would have been okay. He wouldn't have to actually meet his neighbour's eyes and tell his neighbour that he accidentally signed for the delivery of a box of handcuffs.

Maybe, he thinks (or hopes, more accurately), his neighbour won't be home. Maybe his neighbour will have a full-time job, unlike John, and so he will not actually be at home in the middle of the day on a weekday and John won't end up actually needing to meet him. Then John can go home, find a piece of paper and write 'Sorry, postman delivered this to the wrong house!' and leave the package and the note at the man's front door. He doesn't even need to sign the note. His neighbour will have no way of knowing that the package was delivered to him, as opposed to any of his other neighbours. Then John does not need to start this acquaintanceship with any form of awkward conversation. Everything will be okay.

Then the door handle turns, and that fantasy very quickly leaves John's mind, because the neighbour is home and John is about to have no choice but to wind up meeting under awkward circumstances.

He briefly considers dropping the box and fleeing the scene.

The door opens. The man behind it is neatly dressed – trousers, button-up shirt, suit jacket. John wonders if he's about to go to work, and if so, what his work involves, and whether or not the box of handcuffs is for his job. However, John cannot think of anything that would require handcuffs except for the obvious – a police officer – and John is fairly sure that police don't order their handcuffs in bulk online and get them delivered to their private residence.

The man's expression, for the most part, is neutral, though John thinks he sees a flicker of surprise when he opened the door, like he was expecting someone else. He probably was. He was probably expecting the postman; of course he would be surprised now that he has opened the door and found an unfamiliar face standing there instead.

"Um, hi," John says, a little awkwardly. The man is looking him up and down in a way that makes John feel oddly like he's being assessed for something. He's not sure what. "I'm..."

The man cuts him off, finishing the sentence for him. "My new neighbour."

John blinks in surprise, but quickly decides that he probably shouldn't be surprised. He has been here for a few weeks, after all. Maybe this man has seen him before as he has come and gone from his own home.

So, John says, "Yeah, that's right. I'm John."

John already knows that the man's name is Sherlock, because that is the name on the delivery. However, Sherlock doesn't introduce himself. Instead, his gaze immediately goes to the parcel in John's hand. His gaze is so intense that John feels he wouldn't be surprised if the man had x-ray vision.

"That's my parcel," he says. John wonders if maybe the man really does have x-ray vision.

"Ah, yeah," John says. "The postman delivered it to the wrong address, sorry."

He holds the parcel out, and Sherlock takes it. "It's not the first time the postman misplaced a delivery. He's incompetent at the best of times." He looks down at the top, and John knows that he can see the masking tape that John has used to seal the box shut. Sherlock confirms this immediately, because the next thing he says is, "And you opened it."

"Sorry," John says again. "I didn't think to check the name on it. I didn't touch any of them, though. Or take any of them, obviously. It's not like I'd steal handcuffs."

The man raises his eyebrows, and John feels like he's being assessed again. Maybe he is. Maybe Sherlock is trying to decide if he's lying. That said, John would have to be an idiot to steal a part of his neighbour's delivery, and then proceed to return the delivery, while lying about stealing a part of the delivery.

Maybe Sherlock is trying to judge what sort of impression he's made on John, given that John has seen what he's had delivered. He doesn't look embarrassed, but John has only just met the man. Maybe this is his embarrassed expression.

"I'm not judging you," John says quickly.

The man doesn't look relieved. In fact, he only looks confused. "Why would you be judging me?"

"I wouldn't," says John. He gestures to the box. "Whatever you do in your... spare time is your business."

The man frowns more. "Obviously," he says, and John thinks that if he hadn't dug himself into a hole just by opening the parcel, he definitely has now. Time for a tactical retreat.

"Right," John says. "I'll just, um, leave you to it."

The man's expression stays blank. John gives him a couple of seconds to respond, and when he doesn't, John repeats, "Right," and then turns and heads back into his house.

OoO

He barely thinks about Sherlock and the handcuffs for the next week.

He does have one rather unpleasant dream, which starts, as all his unpleasant dreams do, with Afghanistan and blood and gunfire, and ends with him handcuffed to a wall in some sort of basement or a cave, the key held tauntingly too close and yet just too far, by a dark-haired stranger whose blank expression occasionally turns into an almost maniacal grin.

He wakes from this dream at about three o'clock in the morning, and he checks all the doors and windows in the house before he can calm himself down to fall asleep again. By the time the sun rises, it sheds a different light on things, and makes him feel far more ridiculous.

That's the only time Sherlock really crosses his mind, however. On the occasions when they leave the house at a similar enough time to see one another, he takes note of him, and the fleeting thought of what those handcuffs really were for crosses his mind, but it disappears as soon as the man is out of sight. His job, and living in a new house (still new in his mind, even though he's been here for a month) does leave him with plenty to occupy his attention.

(That, and his _Doctor Who_ DVDs finally turn up two days later, so that distracts him for a while, too.)

OoO

He has a day off from work sometime the next week. He promised Ella, his therapist, at his last meeting that he would update his blog, which is the reason why he is currently sitting in front of the laptop screen, watching the cursor blink at him. Nothing happens to him, so he doesn't know what Ella expects him to write about. He's hardly about to write on a public website that he still dreams about Afghanistan and occasionally he wakes gasping for air, even after all this time, and he's definitely not about to write, anywhere his therapist can see, that if they could heal his shoulder and get rid of his limp and the shaking of his hand, he'd be back there in a heartbeat.

He types the words "Yesterday I" and then deletes them, frowning for a moment, and then going to start again. This time, he doesn't get that far, because he hears his phone sound behind him, telling him he has a new text message.

He almost doesn't recognise the sound, at first. It’s been a long while since anyone's texted him. He lost touch with most of his friends when he left for Afghanistan, so he doesn't have anyone to text. Sarah, his manager at work, calls more often than she texts, whenever she needs someone to come in. Harry texts from time to time, though that's usually later in the afternoon, after the bars have opened. If Harry is the one texting him now, John will be a little bit concerned.

He pushes his chair back and gets to his feet, walking over his phone and picking it up. He doesn't recognise the number on there; it's not saved into his address book. Maybe it's one of those spam messages. He opens it up to check.

On the screen, there are three words.

          Assistance required.  
          SH

He frowns at the two-letter signature, running through names in his head. Does he know anyone with the initials SH? He knows plenty of people with a first name that starts with S, but no one immediately comes to mind who also has a last name starting with H. On top of that, he cannot immediately think of anyone who used to sign their text messages with any form of signature. They signed off emails, certainly – usually with a full name rather than just initials – but texts were generally left blank.

After a moment, when no one comes to mind, he types out a response and hopes that he isn't rudely forgetting a close friend.

                    Sorry, who is this?

The message comes through almost immediately, and John frowns.

          Sherlock, from next door.  
          SH

                    How did you get this number?

          Easily. Everything is online  
          somewhere.  
          SH

John glances over at his laptop screen, where his blog, and his empty blog post, are still open, and has a sudden urge to delete everything that he's ever put anywhere on the internet.

Another message comes through a second later, before he has time to think of a response.

          Again, I need your  
          assistance.  
          SH

                    With?

          Come here.  
          SH

                    To your house?

          Do you always ask stupid  
          questions?  
          SH

John's mind immediately jumps to a certain dream, and images of being handcuffed and murdered by a psychopathic neighbour. The dream might have been ridiculous, outlandish even, but the idea behind it doesn't sound as impossible as he would like.

The potentially-psychopathic neighbour sends another message while he's lost in thought.

          Wherever your mind has  
          gone, stop. I'm not about  
          to try to murder you.  
          SH

John tries not to think about the fact that the man seemed to just read his mind.

                    That sounds awfully a lot  
                    like something a murderer  
                    might say.

          Dull. Are you this  
          suspicious of  
          everyone?  
          SH

"Trust issues," his therapist has said. Though it's hardly like he's paranoid. It's hardly as though he has trust issues for no good reason.

The man might have a point, though. John doesn't know him. There might be no reason to immediately mistrust him.

Or there might be a very good reason.

There's no way of knowing without going over there, like the man has asked. He might be a perfectly ordinary human being, who needs John's help for a perfectly ordinary, perfectly respectable reason. There might be absolutely no reason for John to be concerned.

And if the man _is_ a psychopathic murderer whose ultimate aim is to use five pairs of handcuffs on John – well, John is skilled in hand-to-hand combat and he's pretty sure if it came to it he could escape the moment he realised that he did, in fact, have reasons to be suspicious.

Again, the man sends another text while John is thinking. He doesn't seem to like the long gaps in between John's message – even though the long gaps are scarcely more than a minute or two.

          You're a doctor. Aren't you  
          supposed to want to help  
          people?  
          SH

                    Do you need a doctor?

          Arguably.  
          SH

                    If you need medical  
                    attention, you should  
                    call an ambulance.

          If I needed medical  
          attention, I'd have a much  
          better chance if I contacted  
          the doctor living next door,  
          given the average arrival time  
          for an ambulance is 8 minutes.  
          Right now I do not need urgent  
          medical attention. I just require  
          assistance.  
          SH

                    What do you need help  
                    with?

          Come here.  
          SH

                    That's not what I asked.

          I need help getting out of  
          an uncomfortable position.  
          SH

                    Are we speaking literally  
                    or figuratively?

          Literally. Do hurry up, why  
          don't you.  
          SH

John stares at his phone for another moment, tells himself that he's taking a risk and maybe he would be safer if he just stayed home, that if the man really does need help then surely he has someone else he can contact, and if he doesn't, then John should stay far, far away from him.

But curiosity wins out in the end all the same. He stands up, closes his laptop lid, and then steps out of the room, and then out his front door.

Another text comes through the moment he hears his door click shut behind him.

          There's a key under the  
          doormat.  
          SH

                    You realise that's literally  
                    the most cliche place to  
                    keep a key, right?

          If anyone was desperate  
          enough to break into my  
          house, they could break a  
          window. Giving them another  
          option just ensures that they  
          will break into the house in a  
          way that does not cause damage  
          to the building.  
          SH

John can't decide if that makes sense or is the dumbest idea he's ever heard.

He walks across to the house next door. He's vaguely aware of the number of people in the street, walking or driving past, and he hopes that, if he is murdered or abducted, someone will remember seeing him head into this building. Then he thinks that, if he is murdered, it won't really affect him, if anyone discovers who did it or not. It might affect his sister, when he's reported missing. At least, it might affect his sister if she's sober enough to feel anything when he is reported missing.

(He has a rather unpleasant moment of wondering who would miss him, if he was murdered. He then proceeds to lock that thought away in the back of his mind, under the category of 'Things to Think About Never', next to memories of friends dying before he could save them, and an unfortunately clear memory of a bullet going through his shoulder).

John finds the key beneath the doormat, just as Sherlock said he would. It strikes him as he reaches for it that he's not sure why Sherlock needs him to unlock the door himself, as opposed to Sherlock coming to the door and letting him in. Does Sherlock need help because he's unable to get to the door, somehow? He had said he doesn't need urgent medical attention, but that doesn't mean he might still need medical attention, albeit not as urgently as others.

Alternatively, maybe he's making John open the door so that he can strike while John is fumbling with the key, and proceed to handcuff him and torture him.

Those thoughts also get pushed out of John's mind.

The key slides smoothly into the lock – so, clearly it's the right key, and Sherlock hasn't tried to distract him by giving him one that doesn't fit – and the door clicks when John turns it. He turns the handle, and pushes the door open, looking around for anything lurking, too close for comfort, by the door, waiting to attack.

There is no sign of danger, but that doesn't quite shake off the sensation that there is a psychopath somewhere further in the house.

The layout of Sherlock's house is much like John's, but that's where the similarities end. John could be considered a minimalist, simply because he doesn't have the money to spend on things he doesn't need (or really, really want, in the case of _Doctor Who_ DVDs). Every item he has some sort of sentimental attachment to, like photographs from Afghanistan and dog tags, are hidden in a box under his bed, because they also bring back a number of less-than-pleasant memories that he'd rather not be subject to on a regular basis, if he can help it.

Sherlock, however – Sherlock is clearly not a minimalist by anyone's standards. From the front door, John can only see the living room, and he can see that it is a cluttered mess. Papers are lying all over the place, several of them attached to a wall. Much of the floor is difficult to see because of the items lying on it, some looking as though they've simply fallen from the table or chairs while others look like they've been placed there intentionally, perhaps because Sherlock either could not find anywhere else to put them or perhaps because he simply couldn't be bothered to look.

John remembers being told to clean his room as a child, remembers his mother telling him that his room looked like a pigsty, or like a bomb had hit. If his mother had seen this man's house, then John's room, relatively, would have looked pristine.

"Hello?" John calls into the house, cautiously closing the door behind him, but not locking it, just in case he does need to make a quick escape.

The response comes from down the hall, past the living room. "In here."

If the layout of the house is much like John's, then John is reasonably certain that Sherlock's voice came from the kitchen, or perhaps the dining room. He walks slowly, taking a moment to glance into the living room as he passes it, taking in what he couldn't see from his position by the front door. There's a skull sitting on the mantelpiece, which immediately attracts John's attention. John sincerely hopes that skull did not belong to anyone who had entered Sherlock's house before John.

He's not sure what he expects to find, as he heads further into the house. He's not sure what his neighbour needs help with, and he cannot imagine anything that would require anyone to ask help from someone they barely knew, unless it was for a medical reason. He's not sure what medical reason would lead someone to calling for help from a next door neighbour and not a more familiar doctor, or even an ambulance.

He's not sure what to expect, at all.

But it's most certainly not what he finds.

The first thing he notices is that Sherlock is sitting on the floor, in front of his refrigerator. His legs are stretched out in front of his body, and he's leaning back against the fridge door. John thinks at first that maybe Sherlock _did_ fall, that maybe he has actually injured himself and needs help getting back on his feet, and then John sees the position of his arms. They're stretched up above Sherlock's head, and it takes John a second to realise that they're not stretched up there as though he's trying to get John's attention. Silver handcuffs are closed around his wrists, with the chain linking through the handle on the fridge door.

John stares.

Sherlock says, "Hello."

For a moment, John is silent, taking in the situation. He wonders momentarily if someone has broken into the flat to attack Sherlock or take some of his belongings, and they've taken advantage of the box of handcuffs that Sherlock had delivered previously in order to incapacitate him, but he quickly decides that that idea sounds a little too ridiculous. What are the chances of someone breaking into Sherlock's house now that Sherlock just so happens to be in possession of handcuffs?

"What happened?" John asks, taking a step closer to where Sherlock is sitting. His eyes flicker over the cuff, and Sherlock's wrists, which he notices are red and raw beneath the metal. He wonders how long Sherlock has been sitting there.

Again, he wonders _why_ Sherlock is sitting there. Who could have restrained Sherlock, using handcuffs that were delivered to Sherlock, under Sherlock's name?

As it turns out, the answer to that question is: Sherlock.

"An experiment," Sherlock explains, tugging on the cuff again and then wincing as it rubs against his already-raw skin. John immediately holds up one hand in a wordless gesture to say _Don't do that, you'll make it worse_.

"Experiment?" he repeats, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"Repetition is unnecessary, Doctor. Yes, an experiment. I was proving a point to Lestrade."

"Lestrade?"

"Do you always echo what people say? Detective Inspector Lestrade. I was proving that the handcuffs his team uses are inadequate in comparison to other sets available on the market. The sets that he and his team use are far too easy to escape from, it's a wonder they manage to arrest anyone."

"But you're currently handcuffed to your fridge, and asking me for help," John says slowly. "So you obviously can't get yourself out. Doesn't that mean that the handcuffs work?"

The expression on Sherlock's face says that John has just said something tremendously stupid. "No," he says, speaking slowly, as though he was talking to a child. "The handcuffs that Lestrade uses are over there." He nods his head in the direction of something on the floor, and it's only now that John realises that, sitting next to him, are three more pairs of cuffs. He picks up the one on the far left, which Sherlock had nodded to, looking at it closely. Upon inspection, he realises they're not in perfect condition, like they were when they were brand-new and accidentally delivered to John's door. There are tiny scratch marks around the keyhole.

"The other two cuffs were equally inadequate," Sherlock continues. "Took me less than fifty seconds to open the last one, so I suppose I can commend Lestrade on not choosing the worst option available. Regardless, he could clearly do better. This one, for instance, is a far superior design. The way that the lock is positioned means that I can't get to it with both my hands cuffed, even if I have access to my lock picking set. Of course, it's only adequate if it's used on both hands – I cuffed my right hand earlier and tried picking the lock with my left, and that was easy. Regardless, it's still more suitable than the other three, including the one Lestrade uses, given I managed to get free from all of them even with both hands cuffed."

John looks at the way Sherlock's wrists are held above his head, and the chain that threats through the door handle. "How did you manage to cuff yourself?" he asks.

Sherlock stares at him. "That's your question? I've just told you that I've managed to break myself free from three different pairs of handcuffs, and you're more interested in how I got my hands up there in the first place? What _is_ it like in your head?"

John holds his hands up in defence. "All right, all right, be nice. Are you expecting me to pick the locks now? Because I don't know how to do that."

"Of course you don't," says Sherlock. "What need would an army doctor have for the ability to pick locks?" He pauses, and then adds, "Well, I expect it would not be completely useless if you were held prisoner, but I doubt you'd have access to a lock-picking set, nor would you be unattended for long enough to use it."

John tenses at the thought. Relative to some of his friends, he was lucky. The worst of his injuries is the wound in his shoulder. For some of his friends, the wounds run far deeper, scars in hearts and in minds even more severe than those that come with simply being in war and watching people you love die. John's heard the stories of torture. Just hearing it mentioned in passing, by a man who has no idea what he's talking about, makes him feel sick.

His tone sharper than intended, he asks, "How did you know I was an army doctor?"

Sherlock shrugs his shoulder, the action made awkward by the position of his arms above his head. "Tan, posture, haircut, psychosomatic limp. Obvious. Dull. Moving on."

"Psychosomatic limp?" John repeats. "What makes you say it's psychosomatic?"

"You don't put that much weight on your cane when you stand," Sherlock says, nodding his head in the direction of John's cane. "You limp badly when you walk, but it seems you forget about it when you're standing. You wouldn't forget about any sort of pain if it had a physical source."

John's therapist has said the same thing. Obviously, she's not worked out the source of his limp through examining his posture, but she's had access to his medical records. She knows as well as he does that the only major injury he sustained in Afghanistan was the wound in his shoulder, which should have no impact on his ability to walk. However, John has always dismissed the idea that the injury didn't have a physical source. It's never made sense to him that something that is, effectively, all in his head, could cause him so much pain. She's his therapist, not his doctor. She's not going to be right about everything, especially that which refers to anything physical.

Hearing a complete stranger, who somehow worked out that he was an army doctor, say exactly the same thing is disconcerting, to say the least. His leg twinges a little and he chooses not to comment. Instead, his gaze returns to the handcuffs. "Okay," he says, "so if I'm not picking locks to get you out, where's the key?"

"The box is on the table," Sherlock replies, and John looks over his shoulder. The box in question - the one that was initially delivered to John's house – is indeed on the table, and he walks over, peering inside. There are still two pairs of cuffs in there – two that, John presumes, Sherlock hasn't gotten to testing yet – and six different sets of keys. He frowns.

"Which key?"

Sherlock shrugs again, the attempt just as awkward as the last. "How should I know?"

John bites back a sigh, and grabs all six keys. One of them has to work, after all.

He walks back over to the fridge, and it takes him a moment to lower himself to the floor. He puts his cane down by his side, crouches, and then he has to carefully slide his bad leg behind him so that he can sit down on his knees. The man sighs and rolls his eyes, but John ignores him. He doesn't know John's body like John knows his own body. They're not of the same mind; Sherlock isn't experiencing the pain that John is experiencing. If Sherlock _could_ feel it, then he could talk.

He leans over the cuffs, inspecting them in the hope that a good look at the keyhole will give him a better idea of which key to use. "How did you text me in this position, anyway?" he asks.

Sherlock tilts his head towards the floor, and John notices that, among the pile of his cuffs, is his phone. "Voice activation," he says. "I'm surprised everything came through correctly; the voice recognition software is notoriously unreliable."

"You must be an eloquent speaker," John comments absently.

"Obviously."

Staring at the keyhole doesn't give John much of an idea of what key he needs, other than the fact that it's small. All of the keys are small. He ends up choosing one at random, and he leans over to insert it into the hole on one of the cuffs. "So, you work for the police?" he asks after a pause.

Sherlock scoffs. "Not exactly. I _aid_ the police, when they're out of their depth. Which is always."

John thinks that that sounds exactly like 'working for the police', but he doesn't say this out loud. He jiggles the key, but it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn't fit. He puts it aside, separating it from his pile of unused keys, and he grabs the next. "And you test handcuffs?" he asks as he leans over to try Key Number 2.

"Not usually, no," Sherlock replies. "As I said, this was an experiment. I was bored. And I was proving a point."

John hums. "Some way to pass time." The second key fits the lock, but it doesn't turn. John hopes he doesn't have to try all six keys to find the right one. As he reaches for the third, he looks over Sherlock's wrist, taking in the state of his skin. "How long have you been here for?" he asks.

"I've been testing handcuffs since this morning," Sherlock replies. "However, as I said, I did manage to escape from the last few unaided, so obviously I've not been handcuffed to the fridge all morning."

"All right, so how long _have_ you been handcuffed to the fridge?"

"What time is it?" Sherlock asks, which is a slightly worrying response.

John doesn't have a watch on him, so he goes off the time he remembers seeing on his phone the last time he checked it. "Almost four, I think."

"Approximately eighty minutes," Sherlock replies. "Give or take, depending on how accurate your estimate of time is."

John sits back on his heels to stare at the other man. "Jesus Christ," he says. "You've been here for over an hour?"

Sherlock shrugs. With his arms above his head as they are, it looks more like he's straining his neck. "I wasn't about to admit defeat quickly," he says.

"Christ," John says again. "What would you have done if I wasn't home? Or if I hadn't answered your text and come to help you – which, might I add, I was tempted to do, given I don't actually know you."

"You know me as your neighbour, so it was hardly as though you were responding to the request of someone you've never met," Sherlock says. "And, as long as you were home, I knew you'd decide to help. You'd have been curious. You wouldn't have been able to resist. Had your curiosity not won out, I'd have informed you of the position I was in, and you'd have come then because of your moral compass. Had you not been home, I'd have contacted someone else. You were just the closest and thus the person who would take the least amount of time to get to me, and so I knew you were my best bet."

"You don't know me," John points out. "How do you know anything about how curious I'd be or about my moral compass?"

"You're an army doctor; of course you have a moral compass. Curiosity is a given, regarding the data you have about me. We've had one face-to-face encounter before now, during which you returned to be a box of handcuffs that had been mistakenly delivered to your address. Of course that would pique your curiosity, when coupled with my request for help."

John doesn't want to admit that the man has a point. It's not like John didn't wonder at first what the handcuffs were for, and it's not like he wouldn't have been dying to find out what Sherlock wanted when he got the text. He reaches for the next key, and then sits up on his knees so he can reach the handcuff. "You know, when I got your delivery, this is definitely not what I thought you'd be using the handcuffs for."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sherlock frown. "What did you think they'd be used for?" Sherlock asks.

John very carefully does not answer that question – or meet Sherlock's eyes for a moment. Fortunately, the lock clicks as he turns the key, which makes for a rather good distraction from the topic.

The handcuff opens, and Sherlock's hand begins to slide out, but immediately, John grabs his wrist (below the marks on his skin, not wanting to cause him any extra pain). He drops the key so that he can grab the handcuff as well, before it can slide back out from the fridge handle and let Sherlock's other, still-cuffed wrist fall to the floor. He manages to shift his grip after a moment so he's holding onto both of Sherlock's wrists, holding them above his head. Sherlock's expression is confused.

"You're going to have a bad case of pins and needles if you let your hands fall," John explains. "You need to lower it slowly, so the blood can start circulating again."

"I let my hands fall when I freed myself from the other cuffs."

John shakes his head. "You weren't up here for nearly as long with the other cuffs. You won't have the strength in your arms to hold them up. Your arm will go numb, and it will fall, and it will hurt. I'll lower them, slowly, and then I'll unlock your other wrist, okay?"

Sherlock glares, apparently dissatisfied with the fact that he's not being allowed to do such a simple task, but he doesn't try to pull his wrist away from John's grip. This may, in part, be because he doesn't have the strength in his arm to do that. "Fine," he mutters.

"This is what you get for asking a doctor for help," John says. "I'm going to see if you have anything for your wrists, too, when we're done."

"That's completely unnecessary."

"Look at the state of your wrists. It's completely necessary."

Sherlock narrows his eyes. "I can take care of myself."

"No, you can't, you were handcuffed to the fridge. So, now you're stuck with me helping you. Don't act like it's such a bad thing." Sherlock gives him an unimpressed look, and he adds, "If you wanted to be left here, you should have asked someone with a weaker 'moral compass'."

The expression on Sherlock's face is not unlike one you would see on a petulant child, but he doesn't argue back, and they lapse into silence for a few minutes. John lowers Sherlock's arms slowly, incrementally, feeling the weight in his hands change as Sherlock gradually gets his strength back, the blood rushing through his veins and circulating his body like it should be.

When Sherlock's hands reach his lap, John releases his wrists, and asks, "How do they feel?"

"Fine," Sherlock replies shortly, and John gets the feeling that he would have gotten that answer regardless of whether Sherlock was fine or not.

So, John says, "Can you clench your hand?"

Sherlock does, without complaint and without too much of an issue. The movement is a little bit jerkier than it might be if someone who had not had their arms held above their head for over an hour tried it, but when Sherlock unclenches and clenches his hand a couple of times it becomes noticeably easier.

"Good lad," John says, and he sits back on his heels. Sherlock rolls his shoulders, undoubtedly aching from the position, but John's attention is more focussed on his wrists. Even with his blood circulating normally again, the skin on his wrists is bound to hurt. "Where's your first aid kit?" he asks.

"I don't have one."

John raises his gaze to stare at him. "Seriously?" he asks, and when Sherlock nods his head, he continues, "Do you have – bandages or antiseptic or anything?"

Sherlock frowns in thought. "Possibly," he says slowly.

John expects that sentence to continue with a more elaborate answer. When it does not, he prompts, "Do you know where they would be?"

Sherlock shrugs. "Haven't the faintest."

"Right," John says. He shifts to stand up, wincing as his knees protest from being sat on for so long, and he grabs his cane to help him get to his feet. His bad leg hurts, but it's not unbearable. He pushes it to the back of his mind as much as he can. "I'll try the bathroom cabinet then, shall I?"

Sherlock shrugs again. His eyes are on John's cane, and the expression on his face looks disapproving. John ignores that, too. The man can go ahead and claim that John's limp is psychosomatic all he wants; it's not about to change the fact that John has a limp.

"Right," John says again, and then he turns. He's reasonably certain the layout of the house will be the same as his own, so he heads off down the hall in the direction that his bathroom would be. Sure enough, it's almost where John would have expected to find it – it's on the opposite side of the hallway, but it's around the same spot as the bathroom in John's house.

After a couple of minutes of searching, John manages to find some bandages and a small bottle of antiseptic, pushed away to the back of the cupboard under the sink. The antiseptic bottle is almost full, looking as though it has been used maybe once or twice before. The roll of bandage has clearly been used more than the antiseptic, but there's still a large roll of it under the sink. John hopes that the reason for this, and the reason why Sherlock doesn't have a proper first-aid kit, is that he doesn't usually get himself into situations where he requires medical attention. He has a feeling that the real reason is that Sherlock doesn't care enough to actually treat any sort of injuries properly even when he should.

He takes the gauze and the antiseptic, and, after a moment's searching, also finds some cotton balls. He takes it back to where he left Sherlock in the kitchen, expecting to find him still on the floor. Instead, he finds Sherlock at the dining room table, in the process of closing another cuff around his wrist.

"Oh, no you don't," John says, walking over to Sherlock as quickly as he can manage while holding a cane in one hand and a small pile of things that should be in a first-aid kit in the other. Fortunately, Sherlock froze when John entered the room, looking like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, and he doesn't try to close the cuff around his wrists before John gets there. Sherlock's gaze flickers to the pile of first-aid things in John's hand.

"You found some, then," He says, sounding surprised.

"Didn't you think I would?" John asks, putting them down on the table and taking the cuff from Sherlock before he can do any more damage to himself.

"I didn't think you would quite so quickly," Sherlock replies. "I was certain I'd have enough time to get myself out of another pair of handcuffs before you came back."

"The last pair took you about an hour and a half to get out of, with help. What made you believe that you could actually break out of another pair within the few minutes that I left you alone?"

"Aside from that last pair, the other handcuffs only took me a couple of minutes, at most. The one that I required assistance with is undoubtedly a design that not all companies have adopted, yet, so I'd presume that this one would be more similar to the ones that took minutes to break out of, rather than the last one."

John rolls his eyes, and he pulls out of one of the chairs. "You need to give your wrists some time to recover before you go hurting them again. Even a couple of minutes would hurt them more. Now, sit."

Sherlock glares, but he sits, and John sits beside him.

"This is completely unnecessary," Sherlock says yet again, eyes following John's movements as he pours some of the antiseptic onto a cotton ball.

"I told you already that it's completely necessary," John replies. "As are the bandages that I'm going to put on you after this. Now, are you going to complain and make this take longer or are you going to behave yourself?"

Sherlock's petulant-child expression comes back, but he holds out one hand without complaint.

John supports his wrist with one arm, holding the cotton ball in the other. "This might sting a bit," he warns, and then he places the ball against the raw skin, beginning to rub antiseptic over it. He feels Sherlock's muscles tense just a little at the first contact, but he doesn't hiss in pain or jerk his hand away. Sherlock's expression is hard, and his gaze fixes somewhere over John's shoulder.

They stay silent as John dabs antiseptic on the wounds, finishing with both wrists before he grabs the bandages. Sherlock opens his mouth when John starts to unroll the gauze, but John gives him a look that tells him not to complain, and, fortunately, Sherlock shuts his mouth without a word. Sherlock keeps his hands extended in front of him, and he waits as John wraps the bandages around Sherlock's wrist (a little thicker than he normally would, just on the off chance that the madman in front of him decides that it is a wise idea to handcuff himself again when John leaves). He cuts the gauze with the scissors that he found on the table next to the box, and he makes sure the ends are secure before releasing Sherlock's wrist.

"There," he says. "I'd tell you to leave that on for a couple of days and avoid anything that might hurt your wrists more, but I get the feeling you're not going to listen to me anyway."

"Good observation," Sherlock says, looking at the bandages with distaste. John knows better than to believe he can convince this man, this man who is all but a stranger to him, of doing anything, so he doesn't even try. He just gets to his feet, grabbing his cane from where it leans against the table.

"Is that all, then?" he asks.

"For the moment."

John raises his eyebrows. "For the moment?" he repeats.

"Oh, we're back to repetition. I thought we'd moved past that," Sherlock says. "Yes, that is what I said. I don't require any more assistance with my experiment. However, one thing has become clear to me today."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"That you could be a very valuable assistant to me."

John frowns. "Excuse me?"

"You're a doctor with a moral compass, and you're conveniently located next door to me. I may be in need of help again in the future, be that relating to another experiment, or to a need for medical attention. Rather than seeking out help from any other doctor, it seems infinitely more convenient to just contact the one next door."

"And who says the one next door is willing to help you?" John asks.

Sherlock smirks. "Your moral compass does."

(John thinks, he's probably right.)

Sherlock follows him to the door to see him out, holding it open as John steps outside. "I suppose," John says, "I'll be seeing you around, then."

"I expect so," Sherlock replies. "Afternoon, John Watson."

The door shuts behind him, and John thinks to himself that Sherlock might be the strangest, most interesting person he's ever met.

Maybe it’s something he can write about on his blog.


End file.
